Fliskit Honest John

While watching the Datona 500 what else would I be doing...

For Christmas I got a Fliskit T3 Honest John kit. It's been sitting beside the TV upstairs waiting to be taken to the rocket dungon but in the little baggie just seemed to get overlooked.
Well no more LOL!!! Sunday Waiting for the flag to drop I decided the little kit would be a great lap deversion so I built it during the race.
Wow! went so quick I had time to start another model LOL!!!

On monday it along with several other models made it to the dungon for primer work. In the next few days it should get a first sanding,
I paper towel mopped medium CA into the Nosecone to help seal and fill some of the deeper grain and one small dent that was bothering me. Hopefully this will speed the filling precess. So I can at least get some base white color on it before the weekend.

this kit is the centerpiece on my computer desk now. I didnt go as in depth with sanding the fins as i should have like yours, they look excellent. Are you going with the test round scheme or the grass green soon to be lawnmower projectile? lol


edit zoomed in on the pic and the caption says test round ahh it helps to read first...

gagreen said:

this kit is the centerpiece on my computer desk now. I didnt go as in depth with sanding the fins as i should have like yours, they look excellent. Are you going with the test round scheme or the grass green soon to be lawnmower projectile? lol


edit zoomed in on the pic and the caption says test round ahh it helps to read first...

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Yeap! Red,white & black Test round.

I'm gonna take another look at a Revell kit I have of the HJ. If it's about the same scale I may try to convert the truck launcher to work like I did with the LaCrosse Missile and it's truck/launchers. May be too small thou, I recall the missile was just to tight to put a motor in

Thats a cool idea. I have been tossing around the idea of getting some solderable metals and trying to come up with some realistic, and not so realistic display launch pads for my micros. I think they make really neat desk art alone but having them with a launch system of some type as a stand really makes them look legit lol. ill definitely be watching for updates

gagreen said:

Thats a cool idea. I have been tossing around the idea of getting some solderable metals and trying to come up with some realistic, and not so realistic display launch pads for my micros. I think they make really neat desk art alone but having them with a launch system of some type as a stand really makes them look legit lol. ill definitely be watching for updates

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Not to get too far off the Subject but we really don't need solderable metals for micro launch pads. Evergreen & Plastistruct companies make so many difference shapes & sizes as well as flat stock for creating parts we can manufacture to scale just about any part we want. Further because Micro's leave the pad so quickly it's possible to use these same launchers with only the addition of a small piece of Nomex or a small blast deflector. My everyday Micro launch pad base is a small section of 3/4" clear Acrylic plastic. This base has been in contiunious use for more then 10 years with NO protection at all but shows only a bit of minor distortion from the direct jet blast heat.

Of the three launchers below only two are workable, the nike-smoke launcher is not currently able to hold the required launch rod but with just a little alteration it could be added while the LaCrosse Truck has had it's missile launched more then a dozen times with only a sheet of nomex cloth below the nozzle and ladders Both the Dauphin & Nike launchers are almost entirely scratch built using plastic parts, rod, square and sheet from the suppliers mentioned above. I've found most decent hobby shops have a good supply of these parts available.
Hope this helps.

Primed and sanded the HJ with 240 and 360grit. Looks like she'll need one more coat of primer to complete the filling process on both body tube seams and open balsa NC grain.
Perhaps i'll have it sanded along with removing some lifted color from the ASM this weekend.

Nice. Looking forward to seeing this one painted

Made a little progress on the HOJO last weekend.

Found and have been studing some of the early round M31A1 color test photos checking color combinations. Seems the fin can and fins are more black then red with two opposite sets of fin faces and can between recieving Red treatment. Will make painting the lower fin section just a little more involved, I may resort to liquid mask in this area.

Did get the second sanding out of the way, tac-ragged and sprayed on the first base coat Old formula Krylon Gloss white.

While studing the photos I notices some of the other details I should have already taken into account....Knew I should have done this first but wanted to get the darn model built Found several raised weld strap lines, launch shoes, and most important a better look at the 3 forward mounted raised spin motor housings. I'm seriously considering making these housings 3D from styrene bar. For sure will be adding some of the strapping out of onion skin tracing paper after roughing up the gloss white I just put on. This may delay application of the other two colors a bit.

Need to work on a decal roll pattern for the motor body bars also. LOL!!! one step forward...two steps back. Looks like I'm gonna end up doing a Honest John Drawing anyway...drat!

Over the long wet weekend I did get the weld banding and spinmotors cut,shaped, sanded and applied to the Hojo.
I'm pleased to report cutting and shaping these very small protrusions wasn't as tough a job as anticipated. Actually it was kind of fun after cutting them from the .030" styrene sheet with a #11 X-acto knife.
Rough shaped with a 120grit glit-stick then sanded the curvature of the NC on a section of T3 covered with 220grit sandpaper. CA attached to the re-sanded White model then finished rounding and shaping with 320 & 400grit sanding Glit-sticks.

Motor & fin attachment Weld bandings changed from onion skin tracing paper to standard weight computer paper as I wanted a little more definition then I got with the tracing paper thickness. Elmer's White glue was used to attach the bands.

Took a few photos but they havn't been transfered yet. I got lazy Sunday watching the race LOL.

Layed out and printed a black line body wrap that I've decided it don't like so we'll have to rework it with a bit more beef to the lines. Hopefully I'll re-shoot the model this evening Gloss White. I'm leaning toward NOT repriming first.. will have to keep everything I have two of crossed that the Old formula Gloss white will take on the small styrene pieces. I'm sure the banding will not pose a problem.
Once we have a good base white coat I'll liquid mask the fin can and Nosecone areas and mask off the main motor body area before painting the Black and Red features.

As usual your attention to detail is reflected in yet another awesome build!

JPVegh said:

As usual your attention to detail is reflected in yet another awesome build!

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Thanks Jeff:
Hope adding little things like these give others ideas for their builds.

In the process of looking at Honest John Photos for dimensional details for the spin motors, I also notices something I hadn't seen or even thought about before. That huge strange shaped head had a couple Launch shoes straped to it also. Seems as they are somehow dropped as the rocket leaves the launcher. I'm going to try to upload a static and launch pic showing these shoes. I've decided not to add them or the additional strapping band to this model. It's worth noting by studing various photos of the same vehicle, there are LOTs of Little things we can pick up to add to just about any model that can make it a little more interesting.

Here are the spin motor, band detail & basecoat white pics as well.

In one of your posts you mentioned 3 spin motors and I had always thought there were 4. I went internet surfing and one of the first pictures I found for the M31 round is the one in your last post which appears to have 3 plumes. I found another that had 4 plumes and the text on the Redstone site specifically calls out 2 spin motors. How many are there really?

Found this site with some close-ups of launcher.

https://www.hobbyguild.com/HonestJohn/index.html

Also found this description which fits with what I had recalled from building Estes and Scottglass kits.

"The pedestal section of the rocket houses eight spin rockets. These small rockets are mounted in pairs in the four quadrants of the pedestal. They are positioned so their thrust is delivered perpendicular to the Honest John's longitudinal axis. The spin rockets are fired immediately after the Honest John clears its launching rail, giving the weapon a two revolution per second spin. Spinning the rocket in this manner distributes errors caused by uneven propellant burning.

The solid propellant filler of the rocket motor weighs over 1 ton. It burns for 4.5 seconds and delivers a 90,000 pound thrust. At burnout, the rocket has a velocity of 2,500 feet per second--about 1800 miles an hour. The propellant is a multiperforated double-base composition which can be stored and fired at temperatures from 0° F to 120° F. An electrical heating blanket covers the entire rocket prior to firing. Thermo-statically controlled heating elements within the blanket attempt to keep the propellant at the optimum temperature of 77° F when the ambient temperature falls below this. At higher ambient temperature the blanket acts as an insulator. When the assembled rocket is being transported on its M329 trailer, power for the blanket is supplied by a 3,500-watt gasoline driven generator mounted over the left wheels. When mounted on the launching rail, power is supplied by another generator mounted on the launcher.

The last major component of an Honest John rocket is the fin assembly, which consists of four fins. These fins stabilize the rocket in flight. By being offset 0.5 degrees to the right, the fins also maintain the spin imparted by the spin rockets. This constant spin alleviates aerodynamic errors which may exist after motor burnout. The fin span is 104 inches."

hardinlw said:

In one of your posts you mentioned 3 spin motors and I had always thought there were 4. I went internet surfing and one of the first pictures I found for the M31 round is the one in your last post which appears to have 3 plumes. I found another that had 4 plumes and the text on the Redstone site specifically calls out 2 spin motors. How many are there really?

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These were known for being inaccurate, instead of scrapping the whole project the military likes to make minor changes over time to increase the combat effectiveness of a weapons system. I am not 100% for sure if that is the case on the spin motors here but i wouldn't put it past the engineers to change the number of motors over time. An example i can provide from a first person view was back when i worked on on block 40 F-16's. The aircraft at any specific block 40 squadron would have differences from those at another base biggest example is that some have prat and whit engines while majority have ge's, some may have an antenna in a seemingly odd place compared to another based on different systems that are modded into that squadron.

These slight differences make it tough to nail down some of these details on scale models of military weapon systems. The best bet is to find the exact one that you want to scale and keep with the pictures of that specific piece rather than try to pool other photos in and possibly be trying to combine 2 different models of the same system.

gagreen said:

These were known for being inaccurate, instead of scrapping the whole project the military likes to make minor changes over time to increase the combat effectiveness of a weapons system. I am not 100% for sure if that is the case on the spin motors here but i wouldn't put it past the engineers to change the number of motors over time. An example i can provide from a first person view was back when i worked on on block 40 F-16's. The aircraft at any specific block 40 squadron would have differences from those at another base biggest example is that some have prat and whit engines while majority have ge's, some may have an antenna in a seemingly odd place compared to another based on different systems that are modded into that squadron.

These slight differences make it tough to nail down some of these details on scale models of military weapon systems. The best bet is to find the exact one that you want to scale and keep with the pictures of that specific piece rather than try to pool other photos in and possibly be trying to combine 2 different models of the same system.

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Exactly gagreen:
Precisely why when doing scale modeling of "mass produced" military weapons or systems it's best to pick a specific round (single vehicle, missile or rocket) using only photos of that particular object as documentation.
Since Fliskits decided to model an early large fin M31 version of the HOJO, there were more then likely three spin motors. As hardinlw discovered a few of the very early test rounds had only two. Later M50 varients with the shorter fin set changed to 4 dual nozzle spin motor housings.

In the process of getting a little more into this build, doing most of the detail digging AFTER the fact (a Very bad practice) and having to actually do a drawing to get some "sort of" in the right place i'm not sure where the 1:61 scale number comes from? If we're using the HOJO Main motor diameter (30") as the basis of our "scale" and T3 (.375") tubing as the end model motor diameter which is the way most scales are set, my calcualtions come out to 1:80??? That's a multiplier for all the other full size vehicle dimensions of .0125. This means the OA length and fin span would change a good bit as well. Perhaps Jim will help clear this up, perhaps he started with the OA length?
Since I'm building this model Strictly as a fun Sport Scale model i'm not going to even try to correct all this, just go with it as is. Most of the detailing is just to add a little interest to the model.

gagreen said:

An example i can provide from a first person view was back when i worked on on block 40 F-16's. The aircraft at any specific block 40 squadron would have differences from those at another base biggest example is that some have prat and whit engines while majority have ge's, some may have an antenna in a seemingly odd place compared to another based on different systems that are modded into that squadron.

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Been there. I once asked a Sikorsky engineer for some dimensions of the S-76 and he replied "Which one? We've made 300 and no two are the same."

hhmmm I'll have to look into my records to see where I got the 1:61 scaling factor for the HJ. Been so long I can't recall at the moment...

I think this will be my next acquisition.

NICE WORK!

Steve

To begin the Masking job for this little jewel, I'm going to start with 3m fine line tape that the motor weld bands as indicated in the photographs.
Once in place and burnished down with the back side of a lab spoon the remainder of the white motor body will get at covering of blue painters tape overlapping the 1/4" tape leaving only a sliver out. This combination will then get a good coat of two of Testors dullcoat clear to seal the tape edge.

I generally let the dullcoat set up an hour or so just to be sure before Warming the can and spraying on color.

I goofed on this one just a little as I let the model set overnight before unmasking. I generally unmask after about 10 minutes but I was distracted by other things the better 2/3rd was up to Saturday night....

Anyway by letting the paint completely dry it sometimes leaves a bit of a ragged film edge that will have to be cleaned once the paint is completely cured in about a week. At that time it should be possible to finessit-II these ratty edges away leaving a clean edge.
Same is true of the NC Banner Red. OBTW this is the same Banner Red, and primer used on the ASM that for some reason has been acting so badly. just seems like some models want to be headaches
In any event here we are waiting for the black to completely harden (prehaps by next Thursday) so that I can liquid mask the back side of a couple fins and fin can segments so i can spray the Red on the opposite fincan/fin areas.

last three photos show where we are.

This has always been a favorite of mine in any scale. Yours is really looking good.

Thanks Jeff, It is starting to come together
Last night I applied liquid mask to the fin can and fins to be left black. perhaps this evening I'll get to knife and peel these area in preperation for adding the last red color coat.
Might take the opportunity to clean up the ratty edges left by leaving the earlier masking on to long...we'll see.

Man! there are times I don't know whats happening. Decided to use a Liquid mask I purchased from the Hobby shop to show how the "Harry Homeowner" type stuff works and don't ya know it just will not strip to save it's life.
Brush applied in two overnight coats to build up a good 1.5mil thickness, knifed fairly will with only a little bit of trouble along the fin edges. first peel to expose the areas to be painted seemed to work fine. Painted both nosecone and opposite faceing fin can areas as desired. but when I went to unmask OH MAN what a mess. The mask just would not release I gouged a couple very nasty dents in the NC and got some awful ragged edges along the finely knifed fin edges and fincan vertical color seperations. This Mask didn't work nearly as well as Grip-mask.
Totally PO'ed I got out my Lettering brushes and touched up a couple of the lines. Others well have to wait for more work. The nosecone well have to be completely repainted after some filling. I'm not sure when i'll get around to reworking that. We won't even discuss what happened to the Hawk...nuf to say it'll be back to primer.... OH it's just a little set back...

I think I am going ot have to look at breaking out the ol' air brush for these little guys.... seems like it would be picture perfect for the job and masking is a breeze.

Micromeister said:

Man! there are times I don't know whats happening. Decided to use a Liquid mask I purchased from the Hobby shop to show how the "Harry Homeowner" type stuff works and don't ya know it just will not strip to save it's life.
Brush applied in two overnight coats to build up a good 1.5mil thickness, knifed fairly will with only a little bit of trouble along the fin edges. first peel to expose the areas to be painted seemed to work fine. Painted both nosecone and opposite faceing fin can areas as desired. but when I went to unmask OH MAN what a mess. The mask just would not release I gouged a couple very nasty dents in the NC and got some awful ragged edges along the finely knifed fin edges and fincan vertical color seperations. This Mask didn't work nearly as well as Grip-mask.
Totally PO'ed I got out my Lettering brushes and touched up a couple of the lines. Others well have to wait for more work. The nosecone well have to be completely repainted after some filling. I'm not sure when i'll get around to reworking that. We won't even discuss what happened to the Hawk...nuf to say it'll be back to primer.... OH it's just a little set back...

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I read in a detailing book, that rubber cement works good for mask.Now,this was about masking to get the look of brush strokes and drips and such looking paint jobs.Also this was in an airbrush detail book.I havent tried it at all -either air or can paint. I went as far as getting some rubber cement and thats it. Maybe Ill try it sometime soon now that my mind has been jogged.Anywhoo-nice work and I do admire your Micros. I dont know how you do some of the things you do.

Scotty Dog said:

I read in a detailing book, that rubber cement works good for mask.Now,this was about masking to get the look of brush strokes and drips and such looking paint jobs.Also this was in an airbrush detail book.I havent tried it at all -either air or can paint. I went as far as getting some rubber cement and thats it. Maybe Ill try it sometime soon now that my mind has been jogged.Anywhoo-nice work and I do admire your Micros. I dont know how you do some of the things you do.

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Rubber Cement was a masking medium for many years in fine arts class Scottydog.
Since All the liquid masking films are rubber based they are "or should be" a large step forward in the rubber masking process.
To be perfectly clear had I used my normal Grip-Mask liquid masking material that i've used for years on the job. I'm sure there would not have been a problem. but since this is a hobby forum I wanted to try to use the stuff most of those reading would have ready access to ie.. liquid masks purchased from our Local Hobby shops. Alas This particular material decided it didn't want to cooperate... perhaps 3 coats would have given the material a little more body but that doesn't account for the softening of the underlaying Krylon paint... That was a surprise.... To date I've not had that experience with ANY other liquid mask material or with Bob Dively aircraft liquid mask used on this model. In fact I've used this material of a number of Plastic Model conversions in the past but come to think if it this is the first time i've used it on a painted wood model?
Below is a photo of the Three liquid masks I'm most familar with having the most experience (years) using good old Grip-mask for and on just about everything. The unforunate thing it's only available in GALLON cans for your local sign supply house.....I've been working on the same gallon since 1992 LOL!!!

Sanded the nose cone down to bare wood again, Drying it in the oven for a couple hours, filled the Nasty tweezer gouges enflicked while attempting to remove the liquid mask with 3 new coats of Walmart Grey primer. A week of letting everything dry. sanding 240-400grit. I repainted the nose a single coat of Gloss white then used Frog tape along with a piece of 2" blue painters tape to mask off the seperation seam line the lower section and spin nozzle housings were painted Krylon Banner Red.

A couple additional Black paint brush touch-ups on the fincan Red/Black color seperation lines completed the 3 color paint pattern.

All that was left was the black line on clear body wrap. Oh Man...Pock me, this one's finally all but complete.
Still needs a final Future coating and tying on the 1/2" x 9" yellow Teflon Streamer/permanent wadding before I can put it on the scale to get the Empty weight but for all intent she's DONE.
I'll add the final upright, labled "stats" photo in a couple days to this Last build thread post.

Edit: Final Post with two more pics. With any kind of "weather" luck I'm hoping to get this one and a Bunch of others new micros in the air at our sport launch on May 21.

Better 2/3rds, Grandson & I had a blast over the weekend at the Narhams Sport Launch...What a PERFECTLY BEAUTIFUL Day! Temps in the mid 70-low 80's. light West to southwest breeze 0-5mph early. 5-9 most of the day. Bright sunshine all day.

The Club theme this month was US vs USSR spot landing. I used my Fliskit Honest John to fly against the Red Star Spot. Alas a gust of breeze caught the HOJO just as it left the rod pushing it off target under the streamer
Man are these little models quick off the pad. About half my liftoff shots are just smoke....tried to jump a tad quicker on this one and missed the liftoff.